The Case Against Derrick Rose

This year, the Chicago Bulls extraordinary point guard made the proverbial "leap," and he's every NBA junkie's new favorite player. Except mine. Why do I dislike him so much? An obsessive fan's personal investigation

Most people seem to be delighted by Rose, the blink-quick point guard for the Chicago Bulls. Now in his third season, the South Side native was voted into the All-Star Game as a starter and has established himself as one of the league's few truly indomitable forces. In October, the typically stoic Rose declared himself a league MVP candidate. Halfway through the 2010-11 campaign, he's going after it like it's an item on a wrought-iron to-do list.

It's a simple fact that, with one burst, a brusque shift in direction, and an unforced twist under the basket, Rose can score as easily as if he were all alone in his driveway. He flips in off-balance lay-ups like a man straightening his collar; he dunks with the force of his entire body, like a much bigger player. Rose fills most people with awe, if not joy that once upon a time, James Naismith invented the sport of basketball so that one day he might play it. Me, I watch him and I'm consumed with little more than frustration and dread.

I have a visceral reaction to watching him. I punch chairs. I curse. I clench my teeth. I rewind the DVR in hopes of seeing something that can set me free, or let me in on the party. Believe me, it's no fun being the one guy in America who isn't spirited off into another dimension by Rose's game. Instead, I should be looking for an explanation. So here goes.

As fans, we're used to the amorphous "I like that guy". It's not the worship reserved for franchise saviors, nor is it the puppy love doled out to fan favorites. "I like that guy" is affinity, plain and simple, and probably says more about us than it does them. Its opposite, however—"I don't like that guy"--almost always has a clear root cause. Psychoanalysis was invented to help us understand why we're fucked up, but no one wants to hear a rational explanation for why he's fallen in love.

Ben Roethlisberger is reviled because he's a scumbag and possible sex offender; Derrick Rose has done nothing off the court to raise moral hackles. Okay, there was that time he got into the University of Memphis using phony SAT scores. In some lights, though, that makes him a sympathetic figure, put in an impossible position by the NBA's counterproductive age limit. In 2009, a photograph surfaced of Rose flashing gang signs and smiling (something he almost never does -- his default expression is at once serious and vacant). He apologized, calling it "a joke". I certainly didn't hold it against Rose. I was more interested in what this—much like the red wardrobe that Stephen Jackson once wore and unrepentantly explained to ESPN—might tell us about the way gangs, and gang culture, work.

The most high-minded basketball nerd could raise plenty of questions about Rose's game from a purely functional perspective. These were a lot more prevalent when Rose first entered the league, with an outside shot that charitably could be called "inconsistent". Three years in, he's fid that, and become a three-point threat. There's still some dispute over whether Rose counts as a point guard in the same way the Hornets' Chris Paul manipulates the defense like a logic puzzle, or the way the Celtics' Rajon Rondo creates ruptures and exploits inconsistencies. Rose gets plenty of assists, but he always seems to look for his shot first; when he gives the ball up, especially if it's as any part of set play, he comes off as rote, resigned. When he kicks the ball out to an open man, it's in the moment, a safety valve rather than a systemic ploy.

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I'm not the kind of fan who's bothered by this in principle. The same criticisms could be applied to the Thunder's Russell Westbrook -- Rose's workout buddy in the off-season -- but with Westbrook, each possession is an adventure. If Rose is money in the bank, the bounding, chaotic Westbrook is a bit like shooting craps in an abandoned missile silo. You expect imperfection, and flaw, from Westbrook. Rose has turned an essentially lopsided, adventurous approach into its own kind of fundamentals. Warriors guard Monta Ellis plays at times like a smaller, more lively Rose, but his limitations as an athlete force him to be more creative, resourceful and just generally less of a joyless, vacant killing machine.

Meanwhile, Rose has the tools to make basketball's most rapturous frontier into a path of least resistance. In his hands, the uncanny and the mundane collapse into one. Kevin Pelton at Basketball Prospectus is one of the few to point out that "Rose goes for either the spectacular play (a more difficult shot fading away or off balance) or the easy one (passing out of the paint) rather than going through defenders to draw the foul." Nothing mucks up a pristine drive to the hoop like trying to draw contact; the unwillingness to make this all-important skill a part of his game suggests that for Rose, perfection is just a hair shy of precious.

In his present form, Rose should be no one's gold standard, and his dominance does not mean that lesser, more reckless players are doing something wrong. He is a savant, a freak who has realized that the league has no answer to him. A friend of mine once said of a certain well-known writer "he's most pernicious when he's almost right". Rose is objectionable because his current hot streak—and people's willingness to look past his flaws—do a disservice to Paul, Rondo, or Deron Williams, while unfairly crapping on the likes of Ellis and Westbrook.

Don't get me wrong, Rose isn't Tim Duncan boring (although Duncan is concealing more than he lets on). He does amazing things, in the same way that Jason Richardson's dunk contest performances were brilliant and utterly forgettable. Several million ardent NBA fans would rush to disagree with that point, and so maybe my problem is that I want more. Rose isn't a point guard in the classic sense; he is the raw material of an omni-directional guard like Dwyane Wade. For him to reach the same level, though, he's going to have to get a push. Maybe the league figures him out. Maybe he discovers the performance-enhancing qualities of swagger.

I don't hate Rose for anything he's done, but for what he could do and probably won't. For the player I worry he'll never become.

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